Assessing Children’s First Impressions of “WallBo” - A Robotic Handwashing Buddy

Abstract

In this paper we present our preliminary results from the first trial conducted with “WallBo” a robotic buddy to improve handwashing for children in schools. The one-week trial was carried out in a Scottish school with 16 pupils, aged 6-7 in an ecologically valid setting. The 1:1 interaction with WallBo resulted in 86.25% handwashing compliance, a 33.25% improvement from the baseline handwashing technique pre-WallBo training, and an overall, ≈ 35% improvement on knowledge about hand hygiene. We also report some insights about perceptions about WallBo in this paper.